


Moments in Time

by WhiteWitchDark



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Multi, One-Sided Attraction, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-09-27 08:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20404525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteWitchDark/pseuds/WhiteWitchDark
Summary: Relena and Heero were meant to be... weren't they?





	1. (Relena) Leave me my Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Gundam Wing doesn't belong to me. I'm just playing in the sandbox. Originally posted on ff.net.

Maxwell cornered me on the M2 Satellite, after the war ended and Libra was destroyed. He told me that Heero wasn’t my knight in shining armour. That Heero wasn’t that type of person and I should stop trying to make him into one.

I laughed at him and said I knew Heero better than him.

When Heero came to Sanq as my head of security, I felt vindicated.

Barton found me after his circus show when they came to Sanq. He told me Heero was unhappy, that he didn’t like his job and stayed by my side out of training and duty.

I ignored him and walked away, believing in the truth of our love for each other.

When Heero agreed to attend the Peace Ball as my date rather then my bodyguard, I believed I had been proved right.

Winner spoke to me at the ball. He told me Heero didn’t love me the way I wanted him to, he told me that if I loved him the way I claimed, then I would let him go either to be happy himself or to find his way back to me when he was ready.

I accused him of using his empathy to confuse Heero and claimed he was jealous that his precious circle of Gundam pilots was breaking apart.

When one of my secretaries overheard Heero and Winner arguing over his power, I felt justified.

Chang called me at my office and told me I was being a delusional little girl. I was showing the weakness of women in my unwillingness to see the truth and that I was hurting the person I claimed to love most in world.

I called him a left-over relic of a dead society and hung up, fuming.

When Heero refused to speak to me outside of work for a week, I was furious with both him and Chang.

When Heero quit his job, I was shocked.

I went after him. At twenty I was no more willing to give up on him then I had been at fifteen. I followed him to Spain, to America, to Japan and China. I tracked him across Australia and into Africa. When he left for L4, I followed. When he moved on to L2, I followed there are well. That was where Dorothy found me and convinced me to return to Earth. She had hired a private investigator, she told me, and I needed to see the result.

Po called us at the shuttle port and asked us to come into Preventers. She had the information ready there. She didn’t tell me anything else. At Preventers, I watched the CCTV footage of a young woman trying to seduce first on of the pilots then another. They showed no interest in her, having eyes only for each other.

They showed me the video feed from the Preventers Gym from the day after I spoke to Chang. He was on the sparing mats with Heero. First, they trained and then they kissed. 

She showed me footage from the cameras outside the hall from the Peace Ball. Heero and Winner argued. Then they made up, blonde hair mixing with darkest brown.

She showed me the recording from Barton and his circus arriving on Earth. Heero was waiting for him and he greeted him with a kiss and an embrace he had never offered me. 

She showed me the feed from the M2 Satellite and I watched as a young Maxwell sat between Heero and Winner’s beds holding both their hands in his, reached over to gently kiss them one after the other.

Dorothy said nothing, but the disappointment was in her eyes. Even worse was the sympathy in Po’s. In their reflected pity, I saw the truths I had ignored: the exhausted anguish I remember from Maxwell on M2; he had known I would never believe him and the annoyed confusion from Barton at my home as I refused to see what was obvious to everyone else, the furious desperation of Chang when he tried to make me see reason and I threw the worst insult I could think of back in his face and the disappointed pity I remember from Winner at the Ball when he told me the simple truth of what was in both Heero’s and my own heart. Only the truth of the hopeless pain I had ignored from Heero himself for four long years cut me more. 

Po said nothing as I left. Neither did Dorothy. I left alone.

And alone was how I realised I was. Dorlian Enterprises was on the verge of bankruptcy. The Peacecraft Legacy was mostly tied up in the infrastructure of my abdicated kingdom, untouchable now. To my political allies I was a joke. The little princess who played at being a queen until a boy caught her attention. To my financial backers, I was a high-risk investment that had failed to return. To my commercial contemporaries, I was unreliable, excitable and untrustworthy. My wealth was wasted on flights and hotels, on bribes and informants. My reputation was in ruins and all I had left were the bitter truths and the bittersweet lies that shaped my fairy-tale world. 

Heero came to Sanq because I told him I was scared of retaliation over my role with Romefeller.

Heero came to the ball because I told him I’d been too busy to organise a date and it would be unseemly to go alone.

Heero and Winner argued over whether he should have used his power on me without permission or my knowledge.

Heero refused to speak to me after I said something unforgivable to someone, he held closer then a brother.

Heero quit when he realised, I would never let him go myself.

The dreams are the only comfort I have felt, twisted memories that say what I wish them to. A man dressed in a blue suit opened the door of my room and entered, “Good morning, Highness. How are you feeling today?”  
“Fine.”  
He wrote something on the ever-present chart he carried on his rounds, “You don’t happen to know the date do you?”  
“August the 15th.”  
“Thank you. And your full name please?”  
“Relena Madeline Yuy.”  
“I thought it was Peacecraft?”  
“It was. I married.”  
“Not Dorlian either then?”  
“As I said, I married.”  
“I see.”

Leave me my dreams.


	2. (Trowa) Thank you for the Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout from Relena's breakdown begins...

It’s Monday. Heero always arrives on a Monday. I wake up when the caravan door opens, recognise his silent, but not stealthy footsteps, and drift back into a doze while he drops his bag onto the floor and strips. His gun slides easily under the pillow, safety on. Once it would have been off. Insane bastard. Of course, during the war Maxwell and Chang used prima cord to tie their hair. We all took insane risks. Thankfully, we’ve all mellowed a bit since then.

I still don’t know how Peacecraft kept managing to find us. Thank whatever god was responsible that she got distracted by politics and her idea of peace before it occurred to OZ to track her.

His feet are cold, and he has an odd bump on his ankle from self-detonating Wing that time. It doesn’t get in his way, and I always move to find it when he climbs in with me. I think the others do too. A way of proving to ourselves that it’s really him and that he is really here.

His chest is warm when he snuggles in beside me, his breath hot against the back of my neck. It always makes my skin tingle. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. The tension in him is enough to alert me. And Chang called ahead to warn me. “How long?” I ask.  
“A week.” He replied. His response is military crisp, his version of hesitant. The four of us are probably the only people since the war to hear the ‘Perfect Solider’.

I roll over and pull him against me, twisting him around so I’m spooning him. Heero could throw me through the wall without trying, but as strong as he is, I still have four inches on him and its height that matters for this. Him and ‘Fei are the perfect size for spooning, they both rest just under my chin. Duo is an inch or two smaller and his arse rests too high against me and Quat finally lived up to the promise of the Winner blood and only inch smaller than me.

The last time the five of us were together was… Fei’s party, I think. The one his publishers threw for him. They were practically feinting when Quat walked in and one of them did faint when Duo did. One of the accounts managers was ex-Oz. It was the first time I heard the full story of his and Fei’s escape from Barge. Looking back now, what they did as unbelievable. At the time it probably seemed perfectly rational… War does that, screws with the mind. I pull Heero closer. He’s starting to relax. The old wounds are still there. Him and Quat both try to take responsibility for everything. Peacecraft finally lost it and Heero wasn’t on the right colony to do anything about it. He’d been running for about a year by then.

It’s not his fault, but somehow, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to convince him of that. 

It will be dawn in a few hours, and we’ll have to get up and face the world. Catherine will stand by me, but then she knows about us. Quat’s family have been split down the middle since he admitted his part in the war to them. He might lose a few of those still on the fence, but seriously, he has sisters to spare.  
We lie in silence, not needing to speak and I feel the tension begin to seep out of him. I haven’t kicked him out. I haven’t abandoned him. Whatever come of Peacecraft’s very public breakdown will come, but the five of us will stand together. No words are needed.


	3. (Wufei) Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wufei's turn

I have read books, history books that make my life sound like an adventure story, a horror novel, even, in some cases a romance. Thankfully, the possibility of the Love-of-the-Queen-of-the-World’s-life coming around has mostly kept my past and my dead wife from the imagination of the authors. All that is about to change. It is not Heero’s fault, although I know he blames himself. Peace has agreed with all of us, lessened our reflexes, slowed our reactions. Even Maxwell and Barton didn’t notice we were being followed.

The investigator Relena had hired was good, very good. And she must have begun to suspect Heero’s preferences. The woman had been young and pretty. Pretty enough to have caught other’s attention and not ours. Damning evidence and Relena has never been rational where Heero is concerned, though the exact nature of her obsession remains a mystery to me. The ultimate example of wanting what you can not have maybe? A heterosexual politician dedicated to peace wanting a homosexual ex-terrorist killer. Relena wanted to ‘fix’ him. She had said so herself more then once. I can make it better. I can help you. Yuy isn’t broken, nor is he sick. She doesn’t seem to see that.

Of all of us, I imagined Duo would be the first to befriend her. Instead they took an instant dislike to each other. The first time Relena met him properly after the war, Heero has his face buried in his shoulder, laughing so hard tears were soaking Duo’s jacket. Heero rarely laughs at life. He will laugh at films, at comedy shows and sometimes at Duo’s pranks. He will laugh when he kills, or when he flies, but laugh like that? I have seen it twice. Relena has seen it only the once. And she has never been the cause. A reason to hate Duo and maybe fear the rest of us.

Duo is life incarnate. Odd that someone who lived up to the name ‘Shinigami’ can claim that. But he is. Intoxicating is the only word I have for it. A fire burning brightly and all the brighter for the danger is exudes. He is our heart. As Yuy is our soul. 

She doesn’t seem to understand Quatre’s continued association with us. As CEO of WEI, he is one of the richest and most commercially powerful people in the world. As Advocate General of L4, he is a political powerhouse. Yet among his closest friends are an ex-mercenary turned circus performer, an L2 street-rat turned salvage dealer (and sometimes smuggler), a scholar with neither home nor family and the last survivor of a dead colony and a deader culture who lives up a mountain and moonlights as a Preventer agent . There is a helipad around the back of my house. Yuy set up the email service we use to keep in touch. Maxwell brings him boxes of L2 Rapture cigars to grease the wheels of politics with and Barton preformed at his niece’s birthday last year.

Barton. The Silencer. He still doesn’t talk much and laughs less. But he smiles more now. He has found his niche at the circus and though I don’t think Catherine really understands him completely, she is the anchor he needs. The solid point he can revolve around. During the war it was Heavyarms, then Heero and finally Catherine at the end. He, of all of us, probably understands Heero the best even today. They are both wanderers. A good thing that Relena never realised how much time they spent together off Earth. Heero has no interest to performing in the circus, but he has no objection to manning the ticket booth and he makes what Duo tells me is the best candyfloss ever. 

And what of the Queen of the World, the queen who is destroying out world as I write? I do not know how much damage she can do to us, restricted as she is, living in dreams and fantasies. The reporters are the danger and they have scented blood. Whether it is hers or ours remains to be seen. Either way, our idle is over. Soon the world will know of the bonds that bind us to each other. Bonds of blood, of love, of shared danger and shared ecstasy. Bonds we forged willingly, with our own strength. Bonds we will not passively allow to be destroyed even by the people we almost died to protect. 

We have fought the world before. We will do so again if we must.


	4. Damage Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quatre takes the stage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been the hardest to write. I always struggle with conversation heavy ones.

Cameras flash as I step out. The roar of the crowd is at once terrifying and exhilarating, triggering war time control and peace time reactions in equal measure. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be on L1, at the circus, with Heero in my arms, telling him it would be all right. Instead I was doing damage control from L4. At least I’d managed to find him and get him to L1 before anyone had time to properly move on Peacecraft’s intel. I think it took a while for the novelty of her breakdown to give way to the implications of her words.  
So now, here I was, about to give confirmation to years of rumours and suspicions. We had a plan after all. We always knew this day would come; we just hadn’t expected it to happen like this. I stop at the podium and give a charming smile to the gathered press, “Thank you for coming. I have a short speech prepared and then I will answer a small number of questions. Any further questions can be directed to WEI’s Press Department, The Assembly Ombudsman or whichever other body is appropriate. My usual rule about interrupters being removed still stands.” My eyes scan over the crowd and I catch Shadia’s eye. She nods but doesn’t look happy.  
“First, in light of the information Relena Peacecraft has released into the public domain, I am resigning my position as CEO of WEI. Shadia Winner has been appointed to take my place.”  
Shocked silence greeted my words. I wouldn’t miss being CEO. Few people understood that. Fewer still realised that even without a position in the company, I still owned enough shares to live a very comfortable life.  
“Second, for the same reasons, I am announcing my immediate resignation as Advocate General. Raymond White till take over my role until an election can be properly set up.”  
This time, a wave of murmurs greeted my words. I help up a hand to forestall the questions.   
“Ms Peacecraft has made a number of claims about myself and my closest friends. There have always been rumours, and we always knew eventually someone would figure it out. For that reason, we long ago decided that when the time came, we would own our actions.” My gaze swept over the crowd as they waited with bated breath. I wasn’t sure which revelations they were most excited by.

“During the Eve Wars, I piloted a Gundam.” There, I had said it. I had admitted it to the world. The crowd surged, yelling questions. I waited until security had brought them under control. “As Ms Peacecraft claimed, the others were Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton and Chang Wufei.  
We were fifteen during the war. Very young and very inexperienced.” The crowd tittered, hear the suggestion in my words. “We learned to take advantage of what comfort we could, and those relationships have lasted.”  
“Are you confirming a sexual relationship exists between the five of you now?” a voice interrupted me.  
I nodded to security, who grabbed the offender and hauled the protesting man out. Silence followed. All the respectable journalists knew better then to interrupt me. Hopefully, the less reputable ones had just realised I was serious about that rule.

“In a normal situation, I would tell you that my private life is just that, private. None of us are celebrities and none of us have traded our privacy for publicity.” I paused for a moment, and sighed in resignation, “but we accept this is not the normal situation. One of our most beloved politicians is currently in a mental hospital. Questions have been asked and, on this occasion, should be answered. I want to make it very clear that this is the exception, not the rule.  
Over the course of the war, it was rare that even two of us were together and only twice were all of us in the same place. During the time, all five of us slept with the others. On Peacemillion , headed towards the Battle for Libra was the first time all of us were together without a fight going on around us.” He smiled, “And we took advantage of it. What fifteen-year-old wouldn’t?”  
The crowd chuckled.  
“So yes, I am in a sexual relationship with the other pilots. Questions?”  
“What are you going to do now?”  
I smiled tiredly, “Convince Heero that this mess is not his fault. Then the five of us will decide together.”  
“Who catches?” someone yelled from the back. Sniggers followed the question. Tabloids.  
“During the war it was whoever had the most time before their next mission. Since then, whoever is least likely to be hampered.” I shrugged. Sex questions were a lot safer than Gundam ones.  
“Who is best in bed?”  
I smiled serenely at that question, “Me.”   
Laughter followed the answer.  
“Was there anything between Heero Yuy and Relena?”  
“Not on Heero’s side. He liked and admired her and wanted to help her. Eventually he decided that his presence was more of a distraction then a help. He left at that point. Ms Peacecraft followed him. We’re not sure what she was thinking.”  
“Where are the Gundams?”  
Ah, I had hoped they would be too distracted by the sex scandal to ask that. I shrugged, “Safe. There are currently no plans to do anything with them.”  
“Is the ESUN okay with you keeping them?”  
I sighed, “Up until yesterday, it was a non-issue as no one knew who we were. I would imagine they will be in touch shortly. On that note, last question.”

There was some shuffling before some got a solid grip on the microphone, “Do you think you should be punished for the deaths you caused?”  
“I am. I must live with my actions every single day. The other pilots and I were pardoned under the peace treaty, along with all the other soldiers who fought the war. Thank you for coming. I will leave you in Raymond’s hands now.”

I stepped back from the podium, letting a slightly wide-eyes Ray White take my place, and left the stage. Shadia was waiting for me, her eyes tight, “Quatre…”  
I shook my head and kept walking, but she reached out and grabbed my arm, “Will you be happy with them?”  
The question surprised me. I looked at her, at the woman who had ran WEI from my father’s death to the end of the war and then handed operations over to me with a smile and an offer of help if needed. My breath exploded out of me, “Yes”  
“You don’t have to leave the company.”  
I shook my head, “I never wanted to run WEI. I still don’t really. The war… gave me a different perspective.”  
Shadia nodded and to my shock, pulled me into a hug. “Take care of yourself and remember, you will always have a place here. You and your… boyfriends? Partners?”  
I laughed, “I think that’s one of the things we’ll have to talk about.”  
I hugged her back and then walked away… from everything.


	5. (Duo) Times Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo is the most volatile of the pilots, but even he can reach breaking point

I collapsed into the co-pilot seat of the sleek private shuttle and closed my eyes, exhaustion dragging me down. It had been a hectic forty-nine hours. Sheer dumb luck had me on the same colony as Peacecraft. I hadn’t been looking for her, but the news went colony wide in minutes. The next twenty-four hours had been a mad dash to try to get in touch with everyone. It had only taken me three tries to get past Quat’s secretary. I swear, that woman hates me. Once I got through, we were able to put our plan into motion. It was a simple plan, admit everything and then disappear until the yelling stopped. We had never expected our role in the war to stay hidden forever, but Relena Peacecraft, staring glassy eyed at a camera as she spilled our secrets was not the way we expected to be outed.

Fei, for once, had been in his house and had picked up immediately. He agreed to contact Trowa once the circus’ transport docked. Heero hadn’t asked questions, just gone to the spaceport as ordered after I promised a data dump to explain. Quat had arranged the transport, pulling in a tonne of favours only a couple of steps ahead of the news to get Heero to L1 and into Trowa’s capable hands before the shit really hit the fan. 

Getting Fei out of Tibet had probably been the hardest bit. By the time his chopper landed at the spaceport, the basic story had reached Earth and a few quick thinkers had worked out which port the pilot of Shenlong and Altron would most likely leave through. With Heero in transit, and Quatre too busy tying up loose ends, I was next on the hacking expertise list so got to spend several hours getting Fei through the port without being noticed or leaving any record. 

It was starting to catch up on me. The irony of complaining I wasn’t fifteen anymore at twenty was not lost on me. I scrunched lower in the seat as security meandered by. I had every right to be on the shuttle; I’m listed as one of Quat’s personal pilots, but I didn’t know how the press conference was going and I was too tired to deal with more shit.

It was beginning to sink in. By tomorrow our names and pictures would be all over the Earthsphere. Everyone would know who I was, who I am. For five blessedly peaceful years I’d been able to forget the damage I did during the war, working to build and create rather than destroy. My breath rushed out of me as the world tilted to the side. Our lives hadn’t been perfect, but they had been ours and we had enjoyed them. Now? All gone. All because The Queen of the World has never gotten over a schoolyard crush.

Rage flooded me, rage like I hadn’t felt since the war. What damn right did she have to do this? Couldn’t Catalonia or Une or somebody have stopped her? Okay, maybe not Une. She probably thought we deserved it. Trust me, I could hear the razor blades in her throat when she offered us positions in the Preventers. The photo-op would have been amazing, but no way any of us were happy going there.

A light switched on to my left and I glanced over. The bay doors opened, admitting a tall blonde man walking beside an even taller, swarthier one. They paused at the ramp and Rashid held out his hand to Quatre. They shook and then parted ways. A couple of moments later, the air beside me moved to create a Quatre shaped space, “It’s done.” He dropped into the pilots’ chair, his fingers automatically dancing over the pre-flight checks.  
“How bad was it?”  
He paused, blonde locks falling forward to cover his eyes, “Not too bad. I kept it short. Told them that we were sleeping together and that we were the Gundam pilots. They asked a few sex questions and a few Gundam ones and I left.”  
He was leaving stuff out, but I didn’t press him. Long, slender fingers danced over the controls, and a cultured voice, used to being obeyed, even by Gundam pilots, answered the Flight Decks questions. We were out of the bay and into space in twenty minutes.  
“Get some proper sleep, Duo.” Quatre said, not looking up from the screens and breaking me out of my half sleep state.  
I sighed and nodded, “You joining me?”  
“Let me set the autopilot.”

I made my way back to the bedroom, resignation making my steps heavy. Our idle was over, time to face the music.


	6. (The Ringmaster) That RV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Authors Note: OK… I have no experience of circus living. I can imagine (based on a few TV documentaries) that someone who had lived in RVs all their life would be able to tell when they suddenly lost 4 foot of space.

I knew something was up the day Barton meet us with a huge, brand new, custom built RV and asked to re-join the circus as a full member. Cathy met him at the gate. Refusing Cathy Bloom had always been hard, never more so then when it came to her family. Her father had been my best friend, and her mother very nearly became my wife instead of his. So, I agreed to his return. Outside of the credit chip for his share of the circus, a Gundam pilot trained acrobat and a host of new ideas for shows, I also got a rotating second or third Gundam pilot regularly helping at the circus and crashing in the monster RV.

To be fair to them, the size of the thing made more sense when I, and everyone else, realized it was a permanent home for one young man and a second home for another four. One of them always seemed to be around. The RV itself was a thing of beauty, and obviously custom built. The way it was set up spoke of the close relationship between the people living in it. When I asked where it had come from, Barton had explained that after telling Winner he planned to come back, the other man had handed him the keys, “so they would have room” and seriously _Quatre Winner _ was a Gundam pilot?

The front was a gorgeous living space with an L shaped sofa straight in front and a two-seater in a pop out to one side. They faced a fire and a TV. Bookshelves were set into the side, filled with music books, engineering volumes and history books. I also noticed the Bible in the corner. Odd choices, I thought. The kitchen was behind it, banked units behind an island with three stools and a dining table in another pop out with 5 seats. Behind that was a shower/WC on one side and a walk-in wardrobe on the other. The bedroom was next, up a couple of steps, with a bed that had to be larger enough for ten people! Behind that was another bathroom, with a bath. During the war, he’d shared his bed with Yuy, Chang and Winner at one time or another, that I knew off. The size of the bed made me wonder where those wartime tumbles had led. Even with Winner hiding here every time we were on the same colony, it seemed too much for just a ‘friend’. 

The nail in that coffin came when I asked Cathy why she wasn’t moving in. The look she gave me would have toasted marshmallows! But I knew Cathy. I waited and after a few seconds, she deflated. “He doesn’t want me there when he has nightmares. And… it’s their home.” Interestingly, another pilot always arrives within 24 hours of a nightmare.

I can’t say that Barton’s connections haven’t helped in the past. I still dread to think what would have happened if we hadn’t been able to use WEI’s docks on L4-04561 last year. It took three days to get the main hangers back up and running which lead to a lot of moaning in the dockside bars about spoiled cargo and that was even with the WEI docks being opened as soon as Winner found out from Barton what had happened. Not to mention having a sweeper ship show up when we were left stranded on L1 by a faulty drive gear. That alone was worth pure gold.

But that’s the rub of it; given how often one or more of the other pilots stayed over, it made sense to have a large RV, but I’ve been a circus man all my life. Even with the steps as a distraction, the RV was still 4 feet short on the inside and everyone in the circus knew it. No one who had ever lived in a trailer would willingly give up that much space without a very good reason. I never had the guts to ask what his was. No one else did either.

~~~~~~~~  
Yuy arrived on Monday morning. He slunk in, unnoticed, and I only knew he’d arrived because the roster has been updated to include him.

When I see him, he’s on edge and does nothing more than nod to me. Two hours later, Relena Peacecraft’s interview goes viral and I know why. Yuy and Barton do their assigned tasks. The rest of the time, they remain in the RV. Chang arrives in the early hours of the morning. I knew because I couldn’t sleep and was taking a walk when he came in. And the next morning his name is on the roster too. Winner and Maxwell arrive that evening. Winner tiredly informs me he’s resigned his positions and asks which way to Trowa’s trailer. I snorted before I could stop myself - call that monster a trailer?

It’s the following morning when I work up the courage to approach the RV myself. I know all five of the Gundam pilots are inside. I’m not sure if that was a comfort or more of a concern. Winner’s interview had confirmed my wartime and post-war suspicions. Not that I needed much more confirmation then seeing the five of them interact.  
I knocked on the door. A moment later, Winner opens it. He looks… calm and… something else. I wouldn’t call it happy as such. Maybe relaxed.  
“Good morning”  
“Mr Winner…”  
“Quatre, please, or Quat”  
“Quatre” I tasted the name on my tongue, “We’re moving location this afternoon. I need to know what the four of you are planning to do.”  
He glanced over his shoulder, then stepped back, motioning me in.

Barton and Chang were sprawled on the bigger sofa, their legs tangled together and books in their hands. Yuy is sitting at the kitchen island, dismantled guns in front of him. Winner… Quatre had clearly been helping him with them. There was no sign of Maxwell but the door into the bedroom was closed.

I took the sofa across from Chang and Barton and I hate admitting it, but I fidget. Barton of all people breaks the silence, “We knew eventually, someone would link us to the Gundam pilots. If was always ‘when’, not if.” He untangled himself from Chang and crosses his legs under him. “We’ve spent the last few years establishing what we want and putting everything in place.” He gives me a weary smile and Yuy takes over.  
“Relena’s…” he struggles for the word, “obsession with me has delayed our plans. And her breakdown has sped events up. We’re not as prepared as we would like to be, but we haven’t been caught completely off guard either. Most of the big decisions have already been made. We would like to stay with the circus.”

Whatever I had been expecting, that wasn’t it. They seemed to know that, and Quatre sat down beside me, “We like it here. Of everywhere we’re tried, this fits us best and can most easily absorb us in. And don’t tell me the marketing options aren't making credit signs flash before your eyes?” he smiled at me. I hadn’t got that far. To be honest, I was still caught up on the idea of having _Quatre Winner _ in my circus.  
And speaking of that devil, he adds, “We have some ideas, particularly around the support functions. Heero isn’t interested in being on stage, but having a permanent lighting, sound and pyrotechnics engineer would up your game. Duo, 'Fei and I would all be interested in performing if something came up that suits us. We can also help with the support roles too." "Performing? What can you do?" Chang shrugs from the other sofa, "We’re Gundam pilots.”

The door to the bedroom opened and Maxwell stepped out, a brush in his hand and his hair falling in a silken wave to his knees. Behind him, the back wall of the bedroom was open, revealing row after row of weapons on three sides. My breath caught. Gundam pilots indeed.


	7. (Heero) Mission Accepted

(M2 satellite, in the aftermath of the destruction of Libra.)

Relena Peacecraft embodied peace. She changed it from an ethereal, unreachable goal to something definitive, something real. When she asked me to return to Sanq with her, I never questioned it. I could understand her fear. It would take time for the populace to settle down, time for the new regime to bed in. She had already had to politely extradite herself from the presidential election. And that was on top of the death threats she had received. If she asked me to head her security, how could I refuse?

(6 years later)

I watched, mission cool holding my hands steady on the controls… three, two, one. A flicker in the top of the tent and smoke billowed out of the two concealed machines. Duo landed in the middle, black masked and with a black cape swirling around him. He disappeared almost as quickly. A moment later, Fei walked through the smoke and stopped before the audience, looking around. I knew his lines by heart and was ready the moment Duo dropped down again. A flick of a switch caused the lights to focus on Fei’s sword, shrouding the man himself in shadow and leaving only the shining hero’s blade and the flickering villain’s blade visible to the audience as they fought. It had taken some real ingenuity from Quat and Duo to make the light refract down Duo’s black sword when they connected. 

I could cut the tension with a knife.

Trowa sidled in beside me, his attention on the show and a line of tension I recognized from the war visible down his back. He took the biggest risk of all of us here. This was already his home. We were trying to make it ours too. Mission cool logged it as something to deal with later. Around the edges of the tent, I was aware of the other performers watching too. This show was the first time we, as a team, had worked together since the war. If it worked, if this story-based show that we had painstakingly put together over the past six months worked, then I knew we would move more and more towards it. It was something different to the other circus’ currently touring and between Fei, Quatre and Duo we had a million tales we could use before we had to come up with them ourselves.

I spun the light up, rested it on the Macintosh twins on the trapezes about us as the Warrior Monk chased the ‘Demon’. Above us, they swept the audience with them on a journey between worlds. I let my mind drift, relaxed and focused as only a solider outside of combat but engaged could be. I knew my role and I knew I could do it.

A year ago, I had been fleeing Relena, racing from one end of the Earthsphere to the other and catching stolen moments with my lovers. A year ago, I had been terrified that they would get tired of me and the constant strain I brought to our very complex relationships. A year ago, I had been expecting them to throw me to the wolves, Relena has released on us. A year ago, I was wrong.

An explosion of dancing ‘fire’, or acrobats in flame patterned robes, signified the protagonist’s arrival into the demon realm. Duo moved to stand before a gaudily dressed Cathy in the role of the Demon Queen. Fei appeared out of the smoke and used magic to conjure backup as a handful more demons come to Cathy’s side. My hands fly over the controls, the special effects keeping the tone of the show going and concealing entrances and exits. I focus on what I’m doing as Nalia appears from thin air at the end of Fei’s swords, ethereal and glowing, and unless you knew what to look for, floating two foot of the ground. The magical battle begun between her and Cathy. Knives fly and the battle is over, the spirit defeated. The Queen stumbles in exhaustion and orders the demons forward. It’s the final fight. Fei and Duo decided not to choreograph this and instead play off what the audience had liked before. It was like piloting Wing Zero, in space, in combat against multiple piloted suits. I’m not sure an un-enhanced human could have kept up with them.

A year ago, I was lost and then Duo called me and told me to get to the spaceport. Not to ask questions and he’d sent a datapack. I knew the plan; we’d made it together during a short holiday a few years back. I had been injured and Relena had been too busy to take time off. Instead, Quatre had offered to take care of me and he swept me off to an island where the others met us. We had a week of glorious freedom, of being ourselves and during tense meetings in the dining room and lazy conversations in the sun, we hammered out what to do when some reporter finally, finally cracked the secret of our identities.

We picked the circus as the option that we each could find a place in. I didn’t want to perform, but I could seriously increase their lighting, sound and special effects. Trowa and Duo wanted to perform. Fei’s passion was research, but he was happy to perform. So was Quat, but he recognised that his business training would make him more useful behind the scenes or helping me. That was where the ‘story’ idea came from, a way for everyone to be involved in what they wanted.

But in the end, it hadn’t been a reporter and we hadn’t had any warning despite the hooks we all had in the internet. If Duo hadn’t been on that colony when it hit the waves, we might not have found out until it had spread around the Earthsphere. Trowa had been in transit. Quat has been in the middle of a delicate negotiation. Neither of them would have seen the news. I was hiding and focused solely on Relena’s movements. Fei never watched the news, preferring to read it at the end of whatever challenge he had set himself that day, which meant he could have been several hours away from a comm, just like Trowa.

When I read the datapack, I immediate thought that this was the final straw. They wouldn’t fight for me when Relena had blown their cover and destroyed their lives… because of me.  
Then Trowa pulled me into his arms as he had a million times. Fei stormed in that night, dropped everything and simply grabbed me. I was half asleep and my lack of reaction told me a stupefying story – they didn’t blame me; they weren’t kicking me out. It was… humbling and empowering all at once. 

When Quat and Duo arrived, I was ready for their acceptance, or at least I knew it was coming. Part of my soul still shriveled up and hid in a corner when I heard Duo’s laughter. Then they were there and holding me and Quat was telling me it wasn’t my fault. Relena’s delusions were firstly, her own, the product of her choices, and secondly, the result of what she had been raised to believe. They were not my fault. 

I watched the televised update on her condition from the circle of Fei and Trowa’s arms. Across from us, Duo slumped back against Quat. There was no condemnation. As we turned the TV off, Quatre summed it up, “We may have been hated and feared, but at least it was because of what we chose to do and not because we had been force fed a dream so long we couldn’t live without it.”

The next morning, when we told the ringmaster what we wanted to do, he was surprising willing to listen. He’s been trying to think of a way to make them stand out and we were offering it to him. It was a liberating experience; I could see a marked path in front of me for the first time since I realized Relena wasn’t going to grow out of her obsession. I chose to walk it.

A year ago, I was on the verge of losing everything. A year ago, this life was an unachievable dream.

I pressed the two buttons simultaneously, causing the front of the stage to erupt in flames. Fei raised his flame wreathed sword above his head, shouted his victory to the sky. The audience screamed.

Mission accepted.

**Author's Note:**

> Strictly, this isn't meant to be Relena-Bashing. I don't dislike the character.


End file.
